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Bertha Gusta Judkiewicz was born in Leipzig on the 12th of August 1925, to Jacob Dawid Judkiewicz and Frida Locker. In July of 1930, at nearly five years of age, she moved to relatives in the Korte van Ruusbroecstraat 48 in Antwerp. Bertha’s parents remained in Leipzig; it is unclear why they sent her to Belgium. Ana Raitse, Bertha’s maternal aunt, and her husband Froim Caplan took young Bertha into their care. Froim and Ana had already lived in Argentina, but also moved from Leipzig to Antwerp in September of 1929. Froim ran a grocery store in Antwerp. Bertha’s younger sister Sara Beila, born in Leipzig on the 8th of October 1926, also moved to Antwerp, although the exact date of her arrival is unknown. Sara’s file from the Jewish Register states that she came from Leipzig in December 1932, but it is equally plausible that she only moved in June of 1933, together with Bertha. After all, Bertha briefly moved back to Leipzig before returning to Antwerp in June of 1933. Sometime in the 1930s, probably in 1933, Bertha’s and Sara’s biological mother Frida also moved to Antwerp, where she died on the 21st of February 1937. It is possible that Bertha and Sara stayed with their mother before she died, but there are no official documents to support this. Their biological father Jacob Dawid stayed in Leipzig, where he passed away on the 28th of November 1937. It is certain that Bertha and Sara lived with Froim and Ana at the start of the war.
On the 10th of May 1940, Nazi Germany invaded Belgium. After the Belgian capitulation on 28 May 1940, the Nazis installed a military administration, which passed anti-Jewish decrees to restrict and control the lives of Jews in Belgium. From the 28th of October 1940 onwards, all Jewish men, women and children above the age of 15 were ordered to register themselves in the Jewish Register of their municipality. Froim and Ana registered themselves in Antwerp on the 13th of December 1940. Three days later, on the 16th, Bertha followed suit. In the summer of 1941, their identity documents received a red stamp bearing the words “Jood-Juif” to set them apart from the rest of the population. After Sara turned 15, she was registered on the 18th of November of 1941. In 1942, the military administration passed increasingly far-reaching decrees; first, all Jews had to become members of the Association of Jews in Belgium. Froim, Ana, Bertha and Sara were registered by the local department of the Association in Antwerp on the 10th of March 1942. In June of that year, Jews were ordered to wear the Star of David. Just weeks later, the military administration sent Arbeitseinsatzbefehle to thousands of Jewish inhabitants, conscripting them for forced labour in the East. In August and September, the Nazis conducted raids in Antwerp and Brussels, and initiated the mass deportation of Jews from Belgium, via the SS-Sammellager (Dossin barracks) in Mechelen.
Bertha received an Arbeitseinsatzbefehl bearing the number 5456 and reported for labour at the Dossin barracks on the 11th of August 1942, just one day before her seventeenth birthday. The camp administration added her to the list of Transport III, under the number 402. Roughly 75% of the people on that list arrived at the barracks with an Arbeitseinsatzbefehl. The others had been arrested. The deportation list states that Bertha was a housekeeper. Transport III left Mechelen for Auschwitz-Birkenau on the 15th of August 1942, with 1000 Jewish deportees on board. When the transport arrived, 638 people were immediately killed in the gas chambers. 362 were admitted to the work camp as forced laborers. It is not clear what exactly happened to Bertha. There is no known tattoo number or death certificate on her name, but many documents were destroyed by the Nazis in January 1945. So it is possible that she was selected for labour upon arrival, but that all documents recording her presence at the camp have been destroyed. No specific information regarding the date, location and circumstances of her death are currently known to us.